Multilingualism: Is it Good or Bad?

by Madeleine Kando



Most people agree that speaking more than one language is good for your brain. The poor mono-linguals of the world, most of whom live in English speaking countries really miss out on the benefits of knowing more than one language. In return, they can take pride in the fact that English is slowly taking over the world, pushing out other less ‘important’ languages. Some academics call this ‘Linguistic Imperialism’ and have proposed legislation to stop what they see as an attempt to take over the world through words.

You see, there is a hierarchy in the world of languages. This is a well-established theory called the ‘Global Language System’ *, developed by Dutch sociologist Abram de Swaan in 2001.

Of the 7000 languages of the world, 98% of them are at the periphery, spoken by a few thousand people at a time and often with no written form. Then there are the central languages, a thin layer of about a hundred official languages of nation states, then a third layer of about 12 super-central languages which serve international and long-distance communication, and finally at the apex, is the one hyper central language, which today is English.

Since the primary job of language is to allow people to communicate with each other, this hierarchical structure makes sense. With just 2 languages, you could expect one speaker to learn the language of the other, but if there are 5 different languages, it makes more sense for everyone to learn a more central language, instead of everyone having to learn 4 other languages.

The problem with too many languages is obvious. Take the case of the European Union. Originally there were only a handful of languages to worry about, when the ECSC (European Coal and Steel Community) was first founded, but as the European Union grew and every country’s language was declared equal, the EU became a true Tower of Babel.

That, in itself is ok, since the EU has a veritable arsenal of excellent translators, but with so many languages, EU citizens cannot really participate in discussions and debates. Those, so far, remain at the national level. The Dutch talk about Dutch issues, the French about French issues, etc. Yes, being a EU citizen means you can work and live anywhere, but other than that, not much binds the citizens of Europe to a common identity. If there were only one language, it would support a shared European identity, a feeling that you are part of a community where things could be discussed and debated, a bottom‐up democratisation of the entire continent, which the EU badly needs right now.

Can you imagine if someone from Massachusetts needed a translator to understand what a person from Connecticut had to say? The closest we come to this nightmarish situation, is when you hear a politician from the South trying (usually unsuccessfully) to express himself intelligently.

There is a whole school of thought that defends multilingualism tooth and nail. Its most vocal defender is Professor Robert Phillipson, who has coined terms such as Linguicism (along similar lines as racism and sexism), Linguistic Imperialism and Linguicide.

Phillipson even suggests that: “English, like other colonizing languages, has functioned as a lingua frankensteinia throughout the history of the occupation by Europeans of North and South America, Australia, and New Zealand.”

So you see, when academics get ahold of a topic, they take a big bite out of it. De Swaan doesn’t have much patience for terms like ‘killer language’ and ‘linguistic imperialism’. He argues that languages are not killed but abandoned, that these terms are frivolous and misleading. You can see an interesting debate between Phillipson and de Swaan here:

 
  Language Planning - Robert Phillips vs. Abram de Swaan.

Be that as it may, language does pose a problem for the EU, both practically and politically. Philippe Van Parijs, a Belgian political philosopher, who is not opposed to English becoming the Lingua Franca of the EU, proposes raising a ‘language tax’ on the English-speaking countries to compensate countries with a less widespread language for their expenses for teaching and translation. Fair enough.

But one could argue that non-English speaking countries should pay a tax to the English-speaking countries which provides them with enhanced cognitive capacities and the ability to communicate with a larger number of people. In fact, aren’t English speakers disadvantaged themselves? They don’ t benefit from learning a Lingua Franca which would expand their shriveled minds, since they already speak it.

You could look at English, not as an evil imperialist, but as a gift to humanity. The more languages are removed from the language pot, the more diluted the value of English becomes, being spoken by an increasing number of people. Eventually, the value of the remaining languages increases compared to the dominant language. Like Samson, whose hair was cut by Delilah, one lock at a time. The more hair he lost the weaker he became, until all his power was sapped by the evil Delilah.

It happened before. Latin was the Lingua Franca of the Roman Empire until it fragmented and morphed into the Romance Languages: Italian, French, Spanish, Romanian and Portuguese.

The same might happen to English in the not too distant future. Don’t we have a whole bunch of ‘Englishes’ right now? There is Singlish (English spoken in Singapore), Spanglish, Philipppino English etc. All the Imperialistic hot air will be blown out of English by a tiny pin prick applied by the true owners of a language: its speakers.  leave comment here

* The Global Language System is based on the World-systems theory in sociology, which divides the world into core countries, semi-periphery countries, and periphery countries. During the last few centuries, the status of core country has passed from the Netherlands, to the United Kingdom and (most recently) to the United States.